Staley and museum director Phil Reed agreed to unlock the usually strictly-out-of-bounds sub-basement for Londonist to take a glimpse under the bunker. But for the rank and file, a whole other world yawned in the bowels below all that. Museum visitors witness the spartan luxury of bedrooms ‘enjoyed’ by Churchill, Mrs Churchill and the odd lucky troglodyte that got to live ‘upstairs’.
Nowadays anyone can see the maze of map rooms, meeting areas, telephone exchanges and filing cabinets. Even if they’d followed the right-turners down a smart but unremarkable staircase they probably wouldn’t think anything awry - until they saw the armed marine guard on duty. They wouldn’t notice a few bland-looking individuals discreetly turning right into a dark corridor. Someone entering the Office of Public Information (now the Treasury) would be guided to the general offices on the left hand side.
Perhaps it didn’t occur to the Nazis anyone would be stupid/brave enough to hide their emergency government under the everyday one. “The Germans never found it,” says Steve Staley, operations manager at the museum.
The Churchill War Rooms below Whitehall, from where Sir Winston directed troops, oversaw manoeuvres and recorded rousing radio tub-thumpers, once ranked alongside Bletchley for confidentiality but Britain’s most vulnerable target was hidden in plain sight. Someone spent the war years painting signs like this.
